Mother-Enmeshed Men: Was A Mother-Enmeshed Man Brought Up To Feel Responsible For His Mothers Moods?

What a man may find, if he were to step back and reflect on his life, is that when his mother feels down, he usually does what he can to make her feel better. For example, he might call her if he is not free, but if he is free, he might go and see her.

If he does go and see her, this could be a time when he will take her something to cheer her up. Or if he doesn’t take her anything, when he is there, he could try to make her laugh.

Another outcome

However, when he isn’t able to speak to her or see her, he could find that he ends up feeling guilty. As a result of how he feels, he might find it a struggle to focus on what he is doing.

Due to this, if he is at work, he might not get much done, or a lot of what he does might not be at the level that it usually is. This shows how much of an impact his mother's moods not only have on how he feels, but on how he typically behaves.

Another Scenario

If he is in a relationship, when he is spending time with his girlfriend, he could often become emotionally absent and even have the need to leave her if his mother is not doing well. Thanks to the guilt and anxiety that he experiences, he won’t be able to put what is going on for his mother to one side and fully show up, or even be with his girlfriend.

Or, if he is unable to see his mother, perhaps because he is away, he could end up talking to her over the phone and try to elevate her mood or calm her down. Consequently, his girlfriend is likely to end up feeling ignored, unimportant and as though she is with a man who is with another woman.

A lot To Deal With

After thinking about how caught up he is with his mother and doing what he can to ensure that she doesn’t suffer emotionally, he can wonder why he is this way. He can see that while behaving in this way is serving his mother, it is not serving him.

Instead, it causes him to spend a lot of time ignoring his own needs, being on edge and feeling drained. However, although this is not serving him, he can find that it is not possible for him to just change his behaviour.

A Closer Look

When it tries to do this, the guilt and anxiety that arise can be so strong that he soon goes back to how he was. And, if he were to speak to his mother about what is going on for him, she could criticise him or end up looking sad.

If this takes place, once again, he can feel guilty, and he can experience a lot of shame. What can also arise is the sense that if he doesn’t continue to behave in the same way, he will be rejected and abandoned.

A Strange Scenario

After this, he can wonder why he can’t just settle into himself, freely express himself and meet his needs, and not be consumed by how his mother feels, being careful how he behaves and needing to make her feel better. Nonetheless, if he were able to go back in time and observe what it was like for him during his formative years, he might gradually realise why he is this way.

From a very young age, his mother might have not only been emotionally unavailable and out of reach, but she might have used him to meet some of her needs. He would then have been greatly deprived and deeply wounded and forced to adapt to her.

Self-Alienation

To handle what happened, he would have lost touch with his connected true self and developed a disconnected and outer-directed false self. In other words, he would have lost touch with himself and became who she wanted him to be and behaved how she wanted him to behave.

Part of this would have involved him being in observer mode and monitoring her moods, to ensure that he didn’t say or do anything that might unsettle her. This would have also been a way for him to try to be loved her and not be rejected or abandoned.

The Reason

Now, he might have been made to believe that he was responsible for how his mother felt by his mother and perhaps his father. Then again, if his mother was just emotionally unstable, he might have just taken this responsibility on.

After all, his survival was dependent on his mother, so he wouldn’t have wanted anything to happen to her. Additionally, when he did express himself, his mother might have often reacted negatively, which would have caused him to associate self-expression with rejection.

A natural outcome

Ultimately, he wouldn’t have received the support that he needed to stay connected to and freely express himself. So, even though he is no longer a powerless and dependent child, he will believe that he needs to stay focused on and meet his mother’s needs to avoid being rejected by her and his life coming to an end.

This is why he can’t just change his behaviour, as his system won’t realise that this stage of his life is over and he is now an adult. For this to happen, he will have beliefs to question, pain to face and process, and unmet developmental needs to experience.

This will take courage, support, patience and persistence.

Awareness

If a man can relate to this and he is ready to change his life, he may need to reach out for external support. This is something that can be provided with the assistance of a therapist or healer. 

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Oliver JR Cooper
http://www.oliverjrcooper.co.uk